Everyone dies. It is a basic fact of life. So offing a character just doesn’t scream “creative genius at work” to me. On the other hand, to create a believable Happily Ever After isn’t easy either. Not every author is going to be able to do it. Anyone can type the words to paper, but to weave it and make your characters sing isn’t paint-by-numbers writing. Every book that ends “happy” doesn’t have to mean “it’s a romance,” but I have found myself wondering if there is a rule somewhere stating fiction needs to be depressing as shit to be good.  I guess it could be the same brand of escapism romance is often labeled.

Reading a book about people who have really bad, no good, horrid lives makes yours look all the better. The bills you can’t pay, your kids who won’t behave, your mother-in-law who refuses to go gently into that good night just don’t seem that bad when you weigh it against giving up your baby (willingly) so you can become a nun and spending 20-something years watching your heart waste his life to be near you. Only to later find out your kid’s life was 100 different violent shades of misery. And watch the poor pathetic shell, who was once a man, thank you with joy in his voice for telling him you loved him and prayed for God to let you go because that made his nonexistent life worth not living. OF COURSE, he then drops the fuck dead, with two chapters left of the book. Makes your life look like shiny-happy-people, doesn’t it? Err… but I digress.  Can you tell that book still annoys the hell out of me?

So back to Happily Ever After… I generally think there are quite a few different ways you can roll your character to the great happy, happy, joy, joy.

Admit it, you just want to play house.

The “No-Way-In-Hell-That-Would-Happen-In-Real-Life” HEA *that works*

Those amazing novels that while you are reading the book make complete and perfect sense. You are so with the author, so with the characters, so in that world. And then once it is closed and you are sighing all happy-like and rushing to your phone, blog, MB, or crack pipe of choice to tell the world about it, you slowly realize the end doesn’t seem possible. If you take the book apart, piece by piece, it doesn’t “sing.”

Those books, I think, are prolly the best. It has to take a hella lot of skill to sell the unsellable. And to make people not only take the ride but believe it because of how you put words to a page… that is a great writer.

Nothing in a book needs to be true to life, the author must bring it to life. It is up to each author to MAKE the book believable.

What if there was only one choice and all the other ones were wrong? And there were signs along the way to pay attention to.

The “Meant-to-Be” HEA *that works*

There is no question about it, the hero and heroine belong together. You hit that last page and feel it. The author owns you for those seconds and when you close the book, it isn’t that you WANT to believe – you just do. Because it is FACT.

Go with it Scully

The “Cuz-the-Author-Said-So” HEA

The ones that end and the only reason you know the h/h get their HEA is because the author told you so. The words on the last page spell it out. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t work. If you gave it any thought you could see them in divorce court tomorrow or, you know, dead (which would mean it would be a #1 best seller, made into a movie and serious fiction, ya’ll).

I am not sure if those are misses or just a total show of my cynical nature. Because, to be honest, I think most people will not find their HEA. It is outside my realm of thought, so it tends to make people do a double take when I say, “I love romance.”

But there are many books where I read the Happily Ever After and just can’t cash the check the author wrote. And, really, my reaction to that isn’t always the same. For some books I can just shrug, close the book and move on. For others, I open the book EXPECTING just that sort of ending. More often than not a Diana Palmer book isn’t gonna end in the land of the “real.” A Harlequin Presents doesn’t color within the lines of everyday life. A good amount of erotic romance doesn’t seem to know how to mesh sex with life, at least not at that volume.

And you could decide to throw the baby out with the bathwater and just not touch “those types” of books. But, for me sometimes, that is just fine. I don’t need real, messy, or even believable. Entertain and amuse me with your characters and I am yours for those few hours.  Give me sucky characters and I will rant about the book like it is the devil.

“The element of surprise, random acts of unpredictability? If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced. “

The “Open-ended” HEA or “Happy For Now with a Promise of Happily Ever After Later”

I can totally dig this – generally. I do not need a marriage, “baby on the way and four other li’l ones to coo over” to end the book. At the same time I do not want “tomorrow is another day” shit. I want the h/h TOGETHER. Well and I want it to work.   Of course, if something ‘works’ or not is such an opinion thing. Generally…

So what about you? Do you have to have “nothing but the real” in order to buy a HEA? Can you think of a book where you later thought about it and went “what the fuck?” because the book you loved really didn’t work when examined in parts?

Should we take apart a novel and have the pieces work? Or is it like a puzzle, one missing piece and it doesn’t work? Do you even need to pick? Does one have to be better than the the other?

Does the end make or break a novel for you? Can you love, love, love a book and then decide the read is an “F” because of the last few chapters? For grins, let’s assume it has a HEA.

What are some of your most favorite endings ever? In romance? In any genre?

(tee hee – I edited this and couldn’t resist the mantitty/booty.  It’s my favorite ending.  – Gwen)